---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shiva Shankar <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 7:56 AM
Subject: The horror of Depleted Uranium weapons
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Dear Mr.Mitchell,
I am writing to you about your article 'The Great Hiroshima Cover-Up
-- And the Nuclear Fallout for All of Us Today'. The reality is that the US
is waging what is in effect a nuclear war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Please
look at these articles.
Thanking you,
Yours sincerely,
Shiva Shankar.
--------------------
"The radiation released by DU nuclear warfare is believed to be more than 10
times the amount dispersed by (nuclear) atmospheric testing. As a result,
DU particles have engulfed the world in a radioactive poison gas that
promises illness and death for millions."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B2E2DF9B-1E0C-43F4-BBF6-074C1367E27C.htm
Washington's secret nuclear war, By Shaheen Chughtai, Tuesday 14 September
2004, 22:17 Makka Time, 19:17 GMT
The US has dropped tonnes of depleted uranium on Iraq
Illegal weapons of mass destruction have not only been found in Iraq but
have been used against Iraqis and have even killed US troops.
But Washington and its allies have tried to cover up this outrage because
the chief culprit is the US itself, argue American and other experts trying
to expose what they say is a war crime.
The WMD in question is depleted uranium (DU). A radioactive by-product of
uranium enrichment, DU is used to coat ammunition such as tank shells and
"bunker busting" missiles because its density makes it ideal for piercing
armour.
Thousands of DU shells and bombs have been used in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan
and - both during the 1990-91 Gulf war and the ongoing conflict - in Iraq.
"They're using it now, they're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-a-block
with DU - it's all over the place," says Major Doug Rokke, director of the
US army's DU project in 1994-95.
Scientists say even a tiny particle can have disastrous results once
ingested, including various cancers and degenerative diseases, paralysis,
birth deformities and death.
And as tiny DU particles are blown across the Middle East and beyond like a
radioactive poison gas, the long-term implications for the world are deeply
disturbing.
DU has a "half-life" of 4.5 billion years, meaning it takes that long for
just half of its atoms to decay.
Sick soldiers
Only 467 US soldiers were officially wounded during the 1990-91 Gulf war.
But according to Terry Jemison at the US Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA), of the more than 592,560 discharged personnel who served there, at
least 179,310 - one third - are receiving disability compensation and over
24,760 cases were pending by in September 2004.
A sixth of the Iraq war veterans have already sought treatment. This does
not include personnel still active and receiving care from the military, or
those who have died.
And among 168,528 veterans of the current conflict in Iraq who have left
active duty, 16% (27,571) had already sought treatment from the VA by July
2004.
"That's astronomical," says Rokke, whose team studied how to provide medical
care for victims, how to clean contaminated sites, and how to train those
using DU weapons.
Rokke admits the exact cause for these casualties cannot be confirmed. But
he insists the evidence pointing to DU is compelling.
"There were no chemical or biological weapons there, no big oil well fires,"
he says. "So what's left?"
Cradle to grave
Dr Jenan Ali, a senior Iraqi doctor at Basra hospital's College of Medicine,
says her studies show a 100% rise in child leukaemia in the region in the
decade after the first Gulf war, with a 242% increase in all types of
malignancies.
The director of the Afghan DU and Recovery Fund, Dr Daud Miraki, says his
field researchers found evidence of DU's effect on civilians in eastern and
southeastern Afghanistan in 2003 although local conditions make rigorous
statistical analysis difficult.
Iraqi and Afghan doctors have seen a rise in deformed foetuses. "Many
children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumours protruding from their
mouths and eyes," Miraki told Aljazeera.net. Some newborns are barely
recognisable as human, he says. Many do not survive.
Afghan and Iraqi children continue to play amid radioactive debris. But the
US army will not even label contaminated equipment or sites because doing so
would be an admission that DU is hazardous.
This "deceitful failure", says Rokke, contradicts the US army's own rules,
such as regulation AR 700-48, which stipulates its responsibilities to
isolate, label and decontaminate radioactive equipment and sites as well as
to render prompt and effective medical care for all exposed individuals.
"This is a war crime," Rokke says. "The president is obliged to ensure the
army complies with these regulations but they're deliberately violating the
law. It's that simple."
No remedy
But these blatant violations are practically irrelevant because Rokke's Iraq
mission found that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no known medical
remedy.
US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair used Saddam
Hussein's alleged possession of illegal weapons to justify invading Iraq.
But several prominent jurists hold Bush and Blair guilty of war crimes for
waging DU warfare.
The vice-president of the Indian Lawyers Association, Niloufer Bhagwat, sat
on an international panel of judges for the unofficial International
Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan.
Bhagwat and her fellow judges ruled that the US had used "weapons of
extermination of present and future generations, genocidal in properties".
Friendly fire
And not just against defenceless Afghan civilians.
"Bush was guilty of knowingly using DU weaponry against his own troops,"
Bhagwat told Aljazeera.net, "because the president knew the effects of DU
could not be controlled".
A prominent US international human-rights lawyer, Karen Parker, says there
are four rules derived from humanitarian laws and conventions regarding
weapons: weapons may only be used against legal enemy military targets and
must not have an adverse effect elsewhere (the territorial rule) weapons can
only be used for the duration of an armed conflict and must not be used or
continue to act afterwards (the temporal rule) weapons may not be unduly
inhumane (the "humaneness" rule). The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907
speak of "unnecessary suffering" and "superfluous injury" in this regard
weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment
(the "environmental" rule). Illegal weapons
"DU weaponry fails all four tests," Parker told Aljazeera.net. First, DU
cannot be limited to legal military targets. Second, it cannot be "turned
off" when the war is over but keeps killing.
Third, DU can kill through painful conditions such as cancers and organ
damage and can also cause birth defects such as facial deformities and
missing limbs.
Lastly, DU cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment.
"In my view, use of DU weaponry violates the grave breach provisions of the
Geneva Conventions," says Parker. "And so its use constitutes a war crime,
or crime against humanity."
Parker and others took the DU issue before the UN in 1995, and in 1996, the
UN Human Rights Commission described DU munitions as weapons of mass
destruction that should be banned.
Deceit
Despite the evidence, Rokke says Pentagon and Energy Department officials
have campaigned against him and others trying to expose the horrors of DU.
That charge is echoed by Leuren Moret, a geoscientist who has worked at the
Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons research
laboratories in California.
White House denials are part of a long-standing cover-up policy that has
been exposed before, she says.
President Bush insists warnings about DU are merely propaganda
"For example, the US denied using DU bombs and missiles against Yugoslavia
in 1999," she told Aljazeera.net. "But scientists in Yugoslavia, Greece and
Bulgaria measured elevated levels of gamma radiation in the first three days
of grid and carpet bombing by the US."
Moret said: "A missile landed in Bulgaria that didn't explode and scientists
identified a DU warhead. Then, Lord [George] Robertson, the head of NATO,
admitted in public that DU had been used."
Even the US army expressed concern about the use of DU in July 1990, some
six months before the outbreak of the first Gulf war. Those concerns were
later echoed by Iraqi officials.
Denial
But brushing his own army's report aside - now said to be "outdated" - US
President George Bush has dismissed such warnings as "propaganda".
"In recent years, the Iraqi regime made false claim that the depleted
uranium rounds fired by coalition forces have caused cancers and birth
defects in Iraq," says Bush on his White House website.
"But scientists working for the World Health Organisation, the UN
Environmental Programme and the European Union could find no health effects
linked to exposure to depleted uranium," he said.
Bush can point to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2001 that said
there was no significant risk of inhaling radioactive particles where DU
weapons had been used.
It said the level of radiation associated with DU debris was not
particularly hazardous, but it accepted that high exposure could pose a
health risk.
Scientific studies
WHO also commissioned a scientific study shortly before the 2003 invasion of
Iraq that warned of the dangers of US and British use of DU - but refused to
publish its findings.
The study's main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, told Aljazeera.net that "the
report was deliberately suppressed" because WHO was pressed by a more
powerful, pro-nuclear UN body - the International Atomic Energy Agency. WHO
has rejected his claims as "totally unfounded".
The study found DU particles were likely to be blown around and inhaled by
Iraqi civilians for years to come. Once inside a human body, the radioactive
particles can trigger the growth of malignant tumours.
Bush's claim that the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) gives DU pollution a
clean bill of health is also disingenuous.
UNEP experts have yet to be allowed into Iraq, its spokesman in Geneva
Michael Williams told Aljazeera.net, citing security concerns.
And a scientific body set up in 1997 by Green EU parliamentarians - the
European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) - found that DU posed serious
health risks.
An eminent Canadian scientist involved with the ECRR, Dr Rosalie Bertell,
says the deadliness of DU derived not just from its radioactivity but from
the durability of particles formed in the 3000-6000C heat produced when a DU
weapon is fired.
"The particles produced are like ceramic: not soluble in body fluid,
non-biodegradable and highly toxic," she told Aljazeera.net. "They tend to
concentrate in the lymph nodes, which is the source of lymphomas and
leukaemia".
Known killer
The US military and political establishment cannot plead ignorance. As early
as October 1943, Manhattan Project scientists Arthur Compton, James Connant
and Harold Urey sent a memo to their director, General Leslie Groves, saying
DU could be used to create a "radioactive gas".
DU targets human DNA and may thus affect future generations
In 1961, two nuclear experts, Briton HE Huxley and American Geoffrey Zubay,
informed the scientific community that DU targeted human DNA and "the Master
Code, which controls the expression of DNA", Moret said.
In September 2000, Dr Asaf Durakovic, professor of nuclear medicine at
Washington's Georgetown University, told a Paris conference of prominent
scientists that "tens of thousands" of US and UK troops were dying of DU.
Death sentence
"There has to be a moratorium on the manufacture, sales, use and storage of
DU," geoscientist Moret says, warning that this will not happen unless more
Americans realise what is happening.
The Middle East has been severely contaminated, warns Moret. "That region is
radioactive forever," she says, but worse is yet to come.
Moret says the air carrying DU particles takes about a year to mix with the
rest of the earth's atmosphere.
The radiation released by DU nuclear warfare is believed to be more than 10
times the amount dispersed by atmospheric testing.
As a result, DU particles have engulfed the world in a radioactive poison
gas that promises illness and death for millions.
Rokke went to Iraq a fit and healthy soldier, but the major is now beset
with a variety of illnesses and each day is a struggle.
He suffers from respiratory problems and cataracts while his teeth -
weakened by DU radiation - are crumbling. At least 20 of the 100 primary
personnel he worked with on the US army's DU project have died. Most of the
rest are ill.
Meanwhile, WHO says cancer rates worldwide are set to rise by 50% by 2020,
although it does not link this publicly to DU.
"They would never say that - they offered various strange explanations,"
said Moret. "But DU is the key factor. People will slowly die."
--
http://venukm.blogspot.com
http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur
http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com
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